VANCOUVER — A year ago, debate over Zunera Ishaq’s niqab helped kill the best chances the New Democratic Party ever had to form the national government.

Leaders’ debates last September led francophones to drop their unusually strong support for the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair, who defended Ishaq’s right to wear a niqab at her citizenship ceremony.

Since Mulcair’s stand was highly unpopular in Quebec, it caused English-speaking Canadians to lose faith in the NDP’s momentum. The public suddenly turned to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to defeat the much-feared Stephen Harper, who had referred to the niqab as “anti-woman.”

NDP insiders admit in Inroads, a scholarly Canadian political journal, that the Pakistani immigrant’s relentless legal battle to wear the face-covering niqab indirectly “shook loose” NDP supporters in Quebec, who spread their votes to other parties.

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Even though more than three of four French- and English-speaking Canadians told Leger pollsters they oppose the niqab, most of the media championed Ishaq as a freedom fighter, particularly for a woman’s right to wear whatever she wanted.

A post-election profile in Toronto Life concluded: “The media loved Ishaq. She positioned herself as a valiant voice for all Muslim women … (saying) she was not oppressed, that religious freedom was paramount and that the sudden focus on her niqab was nothing but dirty politicking.”

How did it come to pass that the so-called “liberal” media, and prominent Canadian feminists, championed the 29-year-old suburban Toronto woman who insisted on wearing in a civil ceremony one of the world’s most provoking symbols of patriarchy?

What background was missing from the debate over the niqab?

I was able to obtain Ishaq’s responses to some of these questions this week.

Ishaq told me she respects Mulcair and Trudeau for defending her niqab, and for standing up for multicultural “choice” and tolerance.

She went out of her way to say she also respects Harper, “who created all the mess. He was following his conscience.”

Our telephone conversation revealed a woman who inhabits a world of paradoxes, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “seemingly absurd or self-contradictory propositions.”

On one hand, the famous 29-year-old Sunni Muslim sounded libertarian and morally relativistic, emphasizing “every person is free to live in a way in which he or she feels is right.”

On the other hand she also seems the opposite. She is ultraconservative on segregation of the sexes, homosexuality, abortion, obeying Islamic commands and women being “unclean” during menstruation.

As niqabs become more common in Canada — a regular sight on campuses, including the University of B.C. — it’s worth understanding the apparent contradictions associated with defending this stark symbol of gender inequality.

Since Ishaq was often portrayed as standing up for all Muslim women, it’s important to note hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world, and the majority of the 1.1 million Muslims in Canada, disapprove of the niqab.

Ishaq said she respects the many Muslims who disagree with her. That includes the imam at another Metro Toronto mosque who, not knowing she was present, criticized her for insisting on wearing the niqab.

Women rarely wear the niqab in most Muslim-majority countries, where scarves covering the hair or no headdress are more common. Niqabs have been banned in some Muslim countries, because they were used in crimes and terrorist attacks.

Ishaq’s religiously torn homeland of Pakistan, which she and her family were preparing this week to visit, is one of the few countries where Pew Research found support for the niqab, with 32 per cent saying women should cover their faces.

Only a few hardline Muslim leaders, including in Saudi Arabia, require women to wear long black abayas and press for them to cover their faces.

“Saudi Arabia has chosen that law,” Ishaq said, in one of repeated references to the supreme value she places on “choice,” including at the political level. “I would not say that it’s wrong. I would not say it’s exactly right in Islam. So I would not like to comment.”

She agreed Islamic tradition advocates only personal “modesty.” And she acknowledged nothing in the Qur’an mandates women covering their faces.

“I do not feel that Muslim women who do not wear the niqab are lesser than me. What I’ve done is my choice, another opinion.”

Ishaq also called homosexuality a “choice,” which goes against the predominant understanding among gays and lesbians.

“Being a Muslim, it’s my view that homosexuality is not the right thing. But I have to tolerate it, without discrimination and without hatred. I have no issues with people who are homosexual. That’s their choice. But I definitely do not think it’s right.”

Similarly, in opposition to Western feminists, Ishaq believes abortion is morally wrong.

“According to Islam, I’m not given the choice to an abortion. But I respect all the different opinions and give them the same status. I do not feel anything bad for (women who have abortions). Living in Canada, the most important thing to understand is that we are free in our choices.”

Ishaq said her husband, Muhammad, did not require her to wear a niqab. But she acknowledged the niqab is a symbol of patriarchal power in many Muslim cultures.

“I do not disagree with the fact some women (wear the niqab) out of pressure from their husbands or someone. But the niqab is a symbol of liberation for me. I chose it for myself. Nobody can object, right? We should not pass judgments on other people.”

She laughed when I suggested, since she has not been shy about her stand on niqabs and is bringing a Syrian refugee family into Canada, that she shows the kind of leadership qualities that could make her an imam.

That’s not possible in Islam, she said.

“If I were to be an imam, all the Muslims brothers would come up to me and say, ‘Stop telling people to come out of their homes and do this and that.’ I’m quite liberal so I don’t believe in women being given instructions to stay home.”

Even though Ishaq thinks women can be equal “teachers” in Islam, she said it’s not “natural” for females to be imams — because of menstruation.

“Women have their periods, when they’re unable to lead the prayers. They’re actually forbidden to lead the prayers in those seven or eight days,” she said.

“We are not clean in that state. That’s it. So it’s natural and logical that Islam has commanded the woman she cannot be the imam.”

Similarly, Ishaq believes it’s God’s will that men and women be segregated in mosques in Canada, including the small Ar-Rehman Islamic Centre in Mississauga, where her husband often takes up the duties of imam, or prayer leader.

“The mosque has a separate room for the sisters, behind the men.”

If women mixed with the men for worship, it could cause problems, she said.

“For instance, if the children are crying, the women would have to take the children out of the room. And it might disturb the prayers.”

When Ishaq first began studying Islam, she said, “there were so many things that did not seem to make any sense. But when you go into the details, you learn many amazing things.”

OTTAWA — The overall budget for the Office of Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion, which replaces the Conservative-era Office of Religious Freedoms, could exceed $18 million, according to foreign minister Stéphane Dion.

The office budget was stated at “up to $15 million” in a June press release from Global Affairs Canada. But that’s just the programming budget, according to the response — there’s anther $3.04 million allotted annually to operations and salaries.

That compares to $4.25 million and $720,386, respectively, under the Office of Religious Freedoms.

Since its creation four months ago, the office has been “working to identify programming opportunities,” Dion said in response to a Conservative question on the order paper.

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The office is engaging with organizations that already received funding under the previous administration, Dion confirmed, but also “new stakeholders” looking at a broader range of issues including “peaceful pluralism, inclusion, diversity and democracy.”

Those themes are divided into three divisions, with 36 full-time employees in total: human rights and indigenous affairs; inclusion and religious freedom; and democracy.

Only five people worked for the Office of Religious Freedoms, Dion said.

To focus on indigenous rights abroad could force the government to walk a tightrope, since some Canadian mining operations have been opposed by local populations in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Still, Dion told Postmedia in May he thought “the overwhelming majority of the mining industry of Canada will welcome this focus … they will be willing to work with this office, I’m sure.”

The buck doesn’t stop there for human rights promotion, with Dion explaining that heads of Canada’s diplomatic missions are now “empowered” to speak out about issues in their day-to-day responsibilities, and to media.

“Human rights promotion, including freedom of religious or belief, is now entrenched in our heads of missions’ core objectives and priorities and will be included in their annual performance commitments,” he said.

Some have been accusing the Liberals of being hypocritical on the human rights file.

Dion and the government have drawn criticism for allowing Canadian companies to sell light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, for example, which has a poor human rights record and has reportedly used similar vehicles against its own citizens.

“Selling arms made in Canada to one of the world’s most repressive regimes when we know that similar arms have already been used in that country to go against civilians — that’s shameful,” Hélène Laverdière, the NDP’s foreign affairs critic, recently told the National Post.

She said she believes the actions taken by the government just don’t “mesh” with the values it says it supports.

In the pantheon of unloved Conservative things, the Office of Religious Freedom seems to rank somewhere below the proposed memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa. But while the new Liberal government is circling the communism memorial in a predatory fashion, the fate of the Office of Religious Freedom remains up in the air. The tenure of its “ambassador,” Andrew Bennett, was to expire today, but earlier in the week Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion extended his tenure until the end of March.

Both of these Conservative things have been targeted with the same dreary brand of 140-character criticism. Tweeters have demanded to know, “why not a memorial to the victims of capitalism?” — the very simple answer to which is that, unlike with the communism memorial, no one has proposed one except in jest. And tweeters have demanded to know why the Office of Religious Freedom’s mandate is only outward-looking: why should it worry about Yazidis under fire in Iraq, say, and not niqabis “under fire” in Quebec?

HandoutA drawing of the winning ABSTRAKT Studio Architecture concept for the National Memorial to Victims of Communism which will be situated near the Supreme Court of Canada is seen in Ottawa.

The common thread is the belief that most everything the Conservatives did or supported stemmed not from principle but from a lust for votes — mostly Eastern European diaspora votes in one case, and those of any given religious group with imperilled brethren overseas in the other (though probably mostly Christians, tweeters mostly believed).

This sort of gaucherie drove non-Conservatives around the bend. There’s a wrong way to pander for immigrant votes and a right way, which is also known as the Liberal way. As such, it’s not surprising most considered Bennett’s days numbered — despite the protests of various faith groups.

The government is determining “how best to preserve and protect all human rights, including the vital freedom of religion or belief,” Dion said. But he went well beyond that, praising Bennett’s “remarkable ingenuity, sensitivity and competency over the past three years.”

One of the Liberals’ moral hazards in their early days of governance is undoing things simply because Stephen Harper did them. In this case, Dion is right to resist the urge. Not to say the office is perfect as it is, but it would be exceedingly odd for a government trumpeting Canada’s supposed reengagement with the world to abandon an office with such a basic civil libertarian mandate. If the world needs more Canada, as a certain insufferable Irishman once opined, then surely the world needs of Canada’s religious liberty.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

We’re not perfect by any means, mind you. And while Bennett’s lack of a domestic mandate hardly impugns his foreign one, the dreary tweeters were on to something when they suggested — albeit sarcastically —that a person in Bennett’s position might have something useful to say about Canadian affairs.

He might have had something impartial to say about the issue of women wearing niqabs at citizenship ceremonies, for example. He might have had something to say about the Parti Québécois’ values charter, and about the Quebec Liberals’ legislation that would ban the giving and receiving of public services with a covered face. He might have something to say about Trinity Western University’s desire to give out law degrees and have them recognized by Canadian law societies — the courts take an age, after all, and on this issue much of the legal profession seems far more interested in activism than in law. He might have something to say about Ontario’s curious practice of funding Catholic religious schools but not those of other religions. And since Ontario is perfectly entitled to do that under the Charter of Rights, he might also have something to say about the province’s efforts to compel Catholic schools to teach things that go against their faith.

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If all that raises myriad, likely insurmountable jurisdictional issues — and it does — it certainly doesn’t discredit the idea of someone watching out specifically for religious rights, at a time when traditional and conservative religious beliefs fall ever further behind the political mainstream. We have an official languages commissioner; we have ethics and integrity commissioners. We have budgetary watchdogs.

These are deeply imperfect analogies. But recent history proves that far too few Canadian politicians can be trusted to uphold religious rights when it strikes them as unpleasant to do so, or when it’s advantageous to argue against them while claiming they aren’t. Canada remains a beacon for religious freedom. Ensuring that doesn’t change — unless we decide we want it to — is a worthy goal. So is promoting the Canadian experience, imperfect as it is, abroad.

Andrew Bennett’s three-year stint as ambassador was set to expire this coming Friday, but Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion said Monday it is being extended until at least the end of March as the government weighs “how best to preserve and protect all human rights, including the vital freedom of religion or belief.”

“Dr. Andrew Bennett has shown remarkable ingenuity, sensitivity and competency over the past three years in serving as head of Canada’s Office for Religious Freedom and we are grateful for his continued service,” Dion added in an emailed statement.

Bennett is Canada’s first, and so far only, ambassador for religious freedom after the previous Conservative government established the Office of Religious Freedom inside the Foreign Affairs department (now known as Global Affairs Canada) in February 2013.

While Andrew Bennett’s three-year term as ambassador was scheduled to expire on Feb. 19, the office’s mandate and funding, which was set at about $5 million a year, ran until March 31. By extending Bennett’s term, the two are now on the same timeline.

Despite the extension, it’s widely believed the office’s days are numbered. Speaking at foreign policy conference last month, Dion said the Liberal government would continue to champion religious freedom abroad. But he said religious freedom should not be “disconnected” from other human rights.

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“Human rights are interdependent, universal and indivisible,” he said at the time. “How can you enjoy freedom of religion if you don’t have freedom of conscience? Freedom of speech? Freedom of mobility?”

Conservative foreign affairs critics and some faith groups, including organizations representing Jewish, Sikh and Ahmadiyya Muslim Canadians, have asked that the Liberals let the office continue its work. They say its mandate is more important now than ever, thanks to the role of religion in geopolitics.

The vast majority of women surveyed who wear the niqab in Canada are not only willing to remove their veils to be identified, but feel it is part of their responsibility to do so, according to the most extensive research of its kind.

The niqab has become a polarizing issue in the federal election — with the Conservatives vowing to limit its use in certain circumstances — but interviews with niqabists themselves suggest some political assumptions about them are incorrect.

In fact many of the women interviewed for the study Women in Niqab, by Concordia religion and Islam professor Lynda Clarke, were “irritated” by the widely held belief that they were being forced to wear the veiled garment.

“There’s a lot of myths that’s going on about us, that we women are oppressed and we are forced to wear niqab” said one woman. “I must say that it’s the other way around, because you have to do a lot of work to actually convince other people.”

Clarke, whose 2013 research for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women was based on interviews and surveys of 81 niqab-wearing women in Ottawa, Toronto and elsewhere, said she was surprised by some of the findings in what is the largest study of its kind in the western world.

The women interviewed were generally young and the vast majority had chosen to wear the niqab on their own, often despite the protests of family.

Clarke said she had a sense from the research that choosing to wear the niqab in Canada “may be a bit of a youth movement,” and “a lot of it is done in the spirit of defiance.”

The typical profile of a woman in niqab, according to the study, “is that of a married foreign-born citizen in her 20s to early 30s who adopted the practice after arriving in Canada.” Most are highly educated.

It is important to do research first and find out what is going on before making statements and forming policies and laws

Their reasons for wearing the niqab were “highly personal and individual,” the study found, with “expression of Muslim identity” figuring prominently in the explanations, although the women were split on whether they thought the practice was mandatory.

What surprised Clarke was how “integrative” the women are, despite choosing to cover everything but their eyes. She said she would not have been surprised if niqab wearers would also want to live in separate communities, but that is not what the study found.

She noted the women interviewed also tend to be patriotic and happy with Canada.

And, while Stephen Harper has said covering one’s face with a niqab is “rooted in a culture that is anti-women,” some of the subjects equated wearing the niqab to a kind of freedom, saying it gave them confidence and security.

“The reason I am starting the niqab is that I am seeing in society that there is an oversexualization of women and women’s bodies,” said an Ottawa woman. “Once I started (wearing the) niqab, I felt more comfortable, and it was a sort of barrier to stop the advances.”

All of the women interviewed and surveyed said they would uncover their faces when necessary.

One respondent said she knew of a woman who uncovered her face for a citizenship ceremony “to avoid complications.” She added: “I personally know of no woman who would not co-operate in lifting her veil momentarily when needed and necessary.”

The research was conducted around the time that the niqab and religious accommodation was a hot political issue in Quebec.

Now that it has resurfaced, Clarke said she wishes people would read the research to better understand the issue and who the Canadian women who wear niqabs are. “It is important to do research first and find out what is going on before making statements and forming policies and laws.”

She said she finds the politics around the issue “shameful,” adding it demonstrates a will “not to consider that people might be different than what you insist they are.”

The inaugural meeting of the advisory committee for the Office of Religious Freedom was held on Monday, bringing together some two dozen religious leaders — and one agnostic — from across the country to provide adviceto the office on religious liberty around the world.

I am honoured to have been appointed the inaugural chair of the committee, which brings together Canadians who know that the religious liberties we have traditionally enjoyed in Canada are increasingly under attack around the world. That Canada’s foreign policy would give priority to that concern is consistent with our tradition of defending liberal values abroad.

Restrictions on religious liberty often come from illiberal state action, ranging from restrictions on freedom of conscience and religion to violent persecution. Another worrying trend is that of non-state violence visited upon religious believers and their houses of worship.

The most recent violence visited upon a church struck close to home. Under the cover of darkness early last Thursday morning, the Church of the Multiplication on the Sea of Galilee was set ablaze by arsonists. Built on the traditional site of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand and known as “Tabgha,” the church is attached to a Benedictine monastery and guesthouse. I take pilgrims to Tabgha whenever I visit Israel, and I stayed at that guesthouse myself just a few months ago.

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The arson, which did significant damage to the church complex and sent two people to hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, is thought by Israeli police to be the work of extremist Israeli Jews, as it was accompanied by graffiti in Hebrew that, according to reports, quoted from thealeinu, the prayer recited thrice daily by religious Jews. The desecration of the church was condemned by the interreligious leadership of the Holy Land.

“Since December 2009 about 43 churches and mosques were torched or desecrated, yet not a single person has been prosecuted by the authorities,” read their statement on the Tabgha arson. “The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, representing the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, The Heads of the Local Churches of the Holy Land and the Courts of Sharia Law in the Palestinian Authority, calls on the police forces and respective authorities to do their utmost to bring the perpetrators to justice, to prevent such attacks and restore safety and respect for Holy Sites of all religions.”

Respect for holy places is diminishing. On the same visit when I stayed at Tabgha, I went to the synagogue in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Har Nof, where four ultra-Orthodox Jewish men were killed last November while about their morning prayers. They were killed by two Muslim men who worked at a grocery store nearby. I went to be solidarity with those attacked in a house of worship — sacrilege compounding murder — and to pray for the dead.

JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty ImagesUltra-orthodox Jewish men look on at the scene of an attack, by two Palestinians, on Israeli worshippers at a synagogue in the Har Nof neighbourhood in Jerusalem on Nov. 18, 2014.

Two days later, after I had left Israel, news arrived that a mosque in the Palestinian town of al-Jaba in the West Bank had been set on fire, defaced with graffiti calling for the death of Muslims and Arabs.

All this comes to mind in the aftermath of the horrific massacre at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. It appears that attack was motivated by racial hatred rather than religious, but that it took place in a church during bible study no doubt was intended to make that “sanctuary” something other than what the word means.

Lethal violence in the house of the Lord is not new; the bible itself records the murder of Zechariah “between the temple and the altar,” an episode about which Jesus himself speaks. Christian history in particular records the martyrdom of Bishop Stanislaus in Krakow by the order of King Boleslaw in 1079; of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket by loyalists of King Henry II in 1170; and of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador by government-linked militias in 1980. All were killed in churches.

Then there are those imprisoned unjustly only later to be executed, of which the tradition gives us King Herod beheading John the Baptist, whose liturgical feast day is Wednesday, and Thomas More and John Fisher, killed by Henry VIII. Their feast day fell on Monday. It’s a good week to think about religious liberty.

It’s a good week to think about religious liberty.

After our meetings yesterday I went to the exhibit at the Canadian Museum of History marking the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Not for nothing does it enumerate as its first liberty the freedom of the church against the king.

Alas, attacks on religious liberty do not only come from the state today. They come from many more sides, and so the need for vigilance increases. To contribute to that in a small way along with fellow Canadians of many traditions is a blessing.

Monday evening in Toronto, Justin Trudeau delivered a 40-minute speech in which he attempted to provide a coherent, internally consistent philosophical frame for all his future policies and decisions. It was, essentially, a manifesto. It’s fair to say that no Canadian politician has delivered a speech quite like this, in recent memory.

De facto, Trudeau is attempting relieve the Conservative party of what remains of its intellectual high ground. In the process of calling out the Harper government for what he flatly termed anti-Muslim fear-mongering, the Liberal leader provided the most complete account yet of his political aspirations and motivation. Conservative partisans should not be surprised to discover that, once again, he has an eye to grabbing their lunch money; this time, the ideal of individual liberty itself.

First point: This is classically Trudeauvian (Trudeauesque? Trudeauish?) thinking, harkening back to an era that long predates Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s 16 years as prime minister. P.E.T., the rabble-rousing young essayist, set the enhancement of individual liberty above every other political good, ­a passion that would eventually find expression in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in 1982.

But Trudeau the Younger’s manifesto is also a naked political gambit. It re-stakes a claim to territory the Liberal party began to lose to the Tories a decade ago, especially in the vote-rich Toronto hinterland. Pluralism, in Trudeau’s view, is the soul of Canada and the essence of what makes it work. The trick, he says, is striking just the right balance between “individual liberty and collective identity.”

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He then explores the practical effect in Canadian society of steadily expanding individual liberty — ­from language rights, to women’s rights, to minority rights across the board. Here the right to choose to wear the Muslim niqab or veil, becomes his rallying point. “You can dislike the niqab. You can hold it up as a symbol of oppression. You can try to convince your fellow citizens that it is a choice they ought not to make. This is a free country. Those are your rights. But those who would use the state’s power to restrict women’s religious freedom and freedom of expression indulge the very same repressive impulse that they profess to condemn.”

This flows directly into the bits in the speech that have drawn headlines: First, Trudeau’s observation that state-sanctioned fear of “the other” is nothing new in Canada: “the Chinese head tax, the internment of Japanese and Italian Canadians during the Second World War, our turning away boats of Jewish or Punjabi refugees, our own history of slavery. No Irish need apply. We don’t speak French here, so speak white. The discrimination faced by Greek and Portuguese Canadians in this very city.”

Next, the link he draws between these historical abuses and the Harper government’s recent monomaniacal focus on combatting Islamism, even as it pointedly battles a court order striking down a ban on wearing the niqab at citizenship ceremonies, even where identity is not at issue. “Across Canada, and especially in my home province, Canadians are being encouraged by their government to be fearful of one another,” Trudeau asserted in the speech. “For me, this is both unconscionable and a real threat to Canadian liberty.”

The leader of a liberal democracy, the Liberal leader continued, “ought not to be in the business of telling women what they can wear on their head during public ceremonies.” He’s right in that, most good libertarians would have to agree. It’s to his considerable credit that he’s saying so clearly, even knowing the public mood, especially in Quebec, may be against him.

CP/Darryl DyckLiberal Leader Justin Trudeau addresses students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., on Wednesday March 4, 2015.

What’s most novel about Trudeau’s thesis, at root, is the claim it lays to upholding individual freedom against the encroachments of the state. It’s intellectual ground the Harper Conservatives have been pleased to occupy, virtually without competition, since their Reform Party days in the early 1990s.

Most curious of all: Monday’s speech and the strategy underlying it have been in the works for months, according to Liberal party sources. But the hook was a series of recent Conservative missteps — ­from a Facebook post caterwauling about a non-existent imminent attack on the West Edmonton Mall, to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander’s conflation of the hijab (headscarf) and the niqab, to Conservative MP John Williamson’s facepalm-inducing recent musings about “whities” and “brown people” –­ that together convey the impression that, contrary to all its careful messaging of the past two decades, this Conservative party may not be friendly to minorities, after all.

Clearly, the PMO now perceives some peril here: Late Monday, staffers sent out an email reiterating past assertions by Jason Kenney and by the PM of warm support for Canada’s million-strong Muslim community.

The question is whether it will be enough. Intolerance of minorities is a 35-year-old chink in the Western conservative movement’s armour, which long held it back in Ontario. It’s odd indeed to see this dialectic re-emerge now, long past the time when most had thought it dead and gone.

SURREY, B.C. — Here in one of the most religiously diverse communities in Canada, it is possible to obtain a driver’s license wearing a kipa, hijab, habit, turban or Amish cap — really, any piece of religious headgear that does not obscure the face.

But lifelong Surreyite Obi Canuel is currently unable to drive because he has refused to remove a spaghetti colander from his head for his driver’s license photo. He does it, he claims, because he believes the world was created by an intoxicated Flying Spaghetti Monster.

“I want everyone to understand that they have a right to religious expression,” said Mr. Canuel, standing in the parking lot of his Surrey apartment complex while wearing a bent spaghetti strainer on his head.

While the 36-year-old deftly refused to break character during his half-hour interview with the National Post, it’s all an act, of course.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is one of the world’s most well-known parody religions, and Mr. Canuel — a former Simon Fraser University philosophy student — has long been a public critic of religion.

But with colander-wearing activists already riding religious expression laws to obtain driver’s licenses in several countries, Mr. Canuel’s saga could well end with British Columbia becoming the first place in Canada to welcome “pastafarian” drivers.

“It was my impression that the West Coast of Canada was the most permissive and accommodating region in the entire country — perhaps I’m wrong,” said Mr. Canuel.

Last November, Mr. Canuel posed for his driver’s license photo while wearing a blue toga and plastic spaghetti colander.

The unusual photo was deemed fit for Mr. Canuel’s provincial I.D. card, but after lengthy review by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia — the province’s official licensing agency — it was ultimately deemed insufficient for his driver’s license.

In a written statement provided to Postmedia News, ICBC spokesman Adam Grossman said “we will always try to accommodate customers with head coverings where their faith prohibits them from removing it. Mr. Canuel could not provide us with any proof that his faith prohibits it.”

For months, Mr. Canuel continued to drive by repeatedly renewing paper licenses, but was told last week he would not be issued with a new interim license until he agreed to pose sans-headgear.

Four years before he was appearing in the Vancouver press as an “ordained minister” of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Mr. Canuel was making headlines for circulating a recorded sermon in which Surrey evangelical pastor Justin Dennison says in the wake of the Haiti earthquake that “maybe God has shaken that place.”

“This kind of attitude is not appropriate for a community leader such as him,” Mr. Canuel told Postmedia News at the time.

WikipediaThe symbol of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

More recently, Mr. Canuel posted a 10-minute YouTube video, Case Studies in Religious Intolerance, in which he used hidden cameras to show Jehovah’s Witness missionaries asserting that homosexuality is caused by demons, and Salvation Army thrift stores refusing to stock non-Christian religious texts.

“I don’t want anyone walking away thinking that all religious people think this way, or even most of them, but I think the problem is worse than most people think,” he said at the video’s conclusion. “Resist it where you can, and good luck.”

The “Flying Spaghetti Monster” was first devised as a protest against the Kansas School Board’s 2005 decision to teach creationism in its science curriculum.

In a widely circulated open letter, 25-year-old Oregon physics student Bobby Henderson satirically urged the state to also teach the alternative theory of “Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.”

In the years since, the letter has blossomed into a full-blown cultural phenomenon, spawning tongue-in-cheek religious art, a faux religious text and an international movement seeking to have Pastafarianism recognized by official sources.

U.S. soldiers have had “FSM” listed as a religion on their dog tags, a town councilmember in Pomfret, N.Y., was recently sworn in while solemnly wearing a plastic pasta colander, and colander-wearing pastafarians have been able to obtain driver’s licenses in Austria, the Czech Republic, California, Texas, Oklahoma and New Zealand.

“I am simply claiming the same privileges awarded to those who claim to believe in a magic man in the sky,” the New Zealander, a man known simply as “Russell,” said in a subsequent TV interview.

This mass mockery of religion has not come without pushback, of course. The Flying Spaghetti Monster’s creator has a section on his website proudly devoted to hate mail, and Mr. Canuel hinted on Tuesday that he has been “reading a lot of hate mail.”

Unable to drive, Mr. Canuel says his game plan is simply to wait and hope that — amid widespread online and press attention — the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia will simply bow to public opinion.

“People all over Canada and the United States are telling me they’re on my side, and are applying pressure,” he said.

One of those fans is Everett Martin, a Montreal-based public relations specialist, who contacted Mr. Canuel via Twitter.

Despite the inherent ridiculousness of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, he said Mr. Canuel’s case is a legitimate religious freedom issue.

“There’s no way for an institution in my mind to draw a line and say ‘this is a valid religion and this isn’t and we’re going to enforce that,’” said Mr. Martin. “As soon as you start trying to pick and choose, you’re automatically making mistakes.”

Given the timing, with a provincial election campaign in progress, and months of tension surrounding the PQ’s proposed Charter of Values that would ban religious accessories in public institutions, the atmosphere is unusually charged for a major test of religious freedom at the Supreme Court this week. Beginning Monday, Montreal’s private Loyola High School will face its final battle for the right to teach ethics and religious culture according to its own Jesuit-tradition rubrics.

Quebec’s mandatory ethics and religious culture course (ERC), in practice since 2009, secularizes the teaching of religion according to a principle of “normative pluralism,” according to which no religion is truer or better than any other.

There seems to be confusion in Quebec’s approach between multiculturalism as a public policy and the right of the government to impose a multicultural outlook on every private individual.

(By religion, the ERC means the major religions, but also pagan animism, Wicca and the nutbar Raëlism, which are given the same respectfully neutral attention as Christianity, yet feminism is taught in a traditional proselytizing fashion as a belief system to be adopted on faith by all students).

According to Judge Gérard Dugré, who presided over the original 2010 case in which he sided with Loyola, normative pluralism is a form of philosophical relativism that “trivialize[s] and, for all practical purposes, negate[s] religious experience and belief.”

Private schools were supposed to be exempted from teaching the state’s ERC course if they could offer an “equivalent” course, an imprecise word open to a variety of interpretations. In their 2008 request for exemption, Loyola argued, “Our students are very well trained in the key values proposed by the new program, but that training is carried out in a manner respectful of the Catholic faith, and the moral values that form the cornerstone of our school.”

Quebec refused their request, on the grounds that the Loyola program would “not lead the student to reflect on the common good, or on ethical issues, but rather to adopt the Jesuit perspective of Christian service.” Such an argument reveals a complete ignorance of Christian teachings, in which there is no conflict whatsoever between Christian service and commitment to the common good and reflection on ethical issues.

But in December 2012, Quebec Court of Appeal reversed the trial decision, siding with the province’s refusal to allow the exemption. A key question is whether religious freedom belongs to the individual alone, or to institutions. Judge Dugré clearly felt institutions had religious freedoms, even though the Quebec Charter of Human rights and Freedoms assigns freedom of religion to “every person.” But if that is the case, and only individuals have that right, then parents home-schooling their children should not have to teach the official ERC course. But they are obligated to teach it as well.

Most Quebecers feel that Bill 60’s proposed ban on the kippah, hijab and crucifixes came out of a left field, but if they had been paying attention to the ERC saga, they would have seen that the Charter of Values is merely an extension of these courses. The rationale for the ban on religious symbols was, according to a government statement, that “the state has no place interfering in the moral and religious beliefs of Quebecers. The state must be neutral…to ensure there is no bias in favour of one confession or another.” That is the same thinking that went into ERC.

In S.L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes, a case involving a group of parents seeking exemptions from ERC on religious freedom grounds, the full Supreme Court ruled that it was acceptable for Quebec to compel Christians to submit their children to a concept of God that atheists hold. They said it would do no injury to their Charter right of religious freedom. They were wrong. The right to pass on one’s beliefs to one’s children should be inviolable in a democracy, as long as they are not hateful of others.

There seems to be confusion in Quebec’s approach between multiculturalism as a public policy and the right of the government to impose a multicultural outlook on every private individual. One is democratic, the other is autocratic. To be neutral has not traditionally meant the suppression of expression of religious faith in citizens; it has meant that the state does not assign special privileges to any one religion over others. A truly neutral state would “live and let live.” Quebec’s adversarial approach seems to say that for secularism to live, the rights of its citizens must die.

In a recent poll, it was revealed that the Parti Québécois under party leader and Premier Pauline Marois might be heading for a majority in the upcoming election. This despite or because of the proposed Quebec charter of values targeting religious minorities. With this apparent success looming, National Post soothsayer Steve Murray imagines what else the PQ has on tap for the future.

Quebec’s PQ government has published a helpful set of comic panels showing Quebecers what sort of religious garb will be permitted, and not permitted, under its planned secularism charter. There are separate panels for Jews, Christians, Sikhs and Muslims. Teeny religious symbols are permis au personnel de l’état. Anything visible from across a room, on the other hand, ne seraient pas permis.

But if Pauline Marois and her supporters were being more honest with themselves, the comic would have had but a single panel: an image of a veiled woman with a line through it.

Face-covering is what this is really about. Turbans, crosses and Stars of David are all just collateral damage stuck in for the sake of ostensible religious neutrality. It simply wouldn’t do for Ms. Marois to single out one religious faith for censure. So she created a policy that goes after everyone.

Della Rollins for National Post

This morning, I happened to fall into conversation with a woman at my health club, a Quebec-born Toronto transplant. I’ve known her for years, and never heard her emit any political opinion that did not conform to the standard progressive, Hogtown, multi-culti take on things. But when I asked her about Quebec’s secularism charter, she paused, as if wondering whether or not she should chance offending me. “Uh, well, I’m French …” the woman said, as if she needed to provide me with some sort of an excuse for supporting Ms. Marois’ planned legislation.

Yet when I pushed her on the issue, she quickly admitted that she didn’t actually care about turbans or Stars of David, or even headscarves. All that was beside the point. For her, it was all about the face.

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“When I talk to someone, I want to see their facial expression,” she told me. “I need to know if they’re happy, if they’re angry. It’s basic. If I can’t see that, they’re not really there.”

She’s right. There’s really no politically correct way of saying it, but the truth of it is that the niqab (“a cloth which covers the face as a part of sartorial hijab,” is how Wikipedia describes it) is fundamentally creepy. Human beings are social creatures who become apprehensive and alienated in environments in which they cannot read social cues. The act of donning the niqab is a hostile gesture for this reason. It creates a sense of defensiveness among strangers, because it sends the implicit message that we are either too disgusting or threatening to interact with in a normal human manner.

No one employed by the state, except for entirely solitary tasks, should be permitted to remain masked during work hours

I don’t have a problem with Islam. But I do have a problem with being pre-emptively shunned. And I am in total agreement with Ms. Marois on this single prong of her secularism initiative. No one employed by the state, except for those engaged in entirely solitary tasks, should be permitted to remain masked during work hours.

There are some who say that this attitude is Islamophobic. And indeed, it is true that in the months and years immediately after 9/11, reactionaries said all sorts of phobic things about hijabs and headscarves (often confusing the various terms in the process). But please note that even as attitudes toward Muslims have become more enlightened in Western societies over the last 12 years, there has been absolutely zero change in the instinctive Western repulsion at the Niqab and Burka, which suggests that dealing with masked people taps into a fundamental and well-founded source of anxiety that cannot be made to disappear with sensitivity training.

It is only a tiny slice of Canadian Muslims who support the wearing of the niqab: Most of this country’s Islamic community, no doubt, finds face-covering as alienating as the rest of us. Yet Ms. Marois’ legislation shows how the minority of Muslims who don the niqab is threatening religious freedom for everyone else: Because it is unseemly to crack down on just one religious or cultural tradition, the anti-niqab backlash in Quebec has taken the form of incipient legislation that targets all religious communities. If the niqab, then the turban. If the turban, then the Star of David. If the Star of David, then the Christian Cross. And if the Christian Cross, well then, even non-face-covering Muslim headscarves are outré, as well.

In Quebec, devout followers of many faiths may soon pay the price for the few who follow this one especially unfortunate, anti-social and backwards custom.

jkay@nationalpost.comjonkay
— Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post, and a Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

The Christian exemptions to Quebec’s proposed secular Charter of Values — which would allow the crucifix to remain in the National Assembly, the cross to remain on Mount Royal, and Christmas trees to remain in provincial government buildings — are based on the controversial idea that some religious symbols have become purely secular.

Just as the Christmas tree grew from pagan origins to signify the birth of Jesus, the theory goes that now, in modern post-Catholic Quebec, it merely reflects the secular culture of holidays and gift-giving — “part of Quebec culture,” as the minister responsible for the Charter, Bernard Drainville, said Tuesday.

“We will recognize elements of our heritage that bear witness to our history,” he said of the tree, and the cross.

These exemptions are “certainly going to strike people as hypocritical,” said Paul Bramadat, director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria.

“If the leaders of Quebec society are seeking to exclude from the public and political arenas all historically deep references to religious identity, then it stands to reason that the crucifix would need to be removed, too, not to mention the cross on the top of Mt. Royal,” he said.

Mark Mercer, professor of philosophy at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, said he is “appalled” by the proposals, and objects to the idea of defining symbols merely by their origins, rather than their current significance to the people who use them.

“What I object to is just taking the origin of things as necessarily part of them to the people who use those things today. I think that’s just misguided,” he said. He cited a criminal cross-burning case in Nova Scotia, which recalled the explicitly racist symbolism of Ku Klux Klan, but raised the vexing question of whether burning a cross, by itself, expresses racial hatred, simply because of the symbol’s history.

Francis Vachon for National Post/FilesA Christmas tree in front of Quebec's National Assembly in 2008. A controversy erupted when the government referred to it as a "celebration tree."

“There’s the origin, and it’s always tainted by its origin,” he said, but it is wrong to think a symbol always “retains the aspect of their origin.”

Christmas trees and crucifixes raise similar problems. “The province itself, as a legitimate, authoritative political entity, can do things like declare that, for the province, [a symbol] does not have religious significance… We accept that sort of thing all over the place. Remember, [in hockey] a goal isn’t scored just when a puck crosses the line. The goal isn’t scored until the referee raises his arm. Is it a goal? Depends what the referee says. Same thing. Is the Christmas tree a religious symbol?” he said, and quoted a baseball umpire to the effect that, “It ain’t nothing until I call it.”

The issue is already familiar to the courts. Justin Trottier, a prominent secularist activist with the Centre for Inquiry, said that 28 city councils in Ontario still begin sessions with the Lord’s Prayer, and only three or four have voluntarily complied with a court ruling that this is unconstitutional.

He also said a push was on for a Supreme Court of Canada review of a recent Quebec case, in which a mayor’s use of Christian prayer in Saguenay was judged to not violate the state’s religious neutrality.

Quebec is not the first jurisdiction to face these deep problems of the modern relevance of historical state religion. A landmark case in the United States Supreme Court, for example, divided the judges on the issue of whether a Pittsburgh courthouse could display a nativity scene, a Christmas tree, and a menorah. In the end, despite broad dissent, the tree and the menorah were in, and the nativity was out.

On such a fraught issue as religious faith in the secular state, however, the law offers only limited guidance.

“The discomfort people have with removing the crucifix reflects the deep roots of religion, and its signs and symbols, in the tastes, smells, practices, norms, habits and feelings of many even thoroughly secular people,” Prof. Bramadat said.

“Those staunch secularists who want to leave the crucifix alone because, well, removing it would ‘feel wrong’ and the National Assembly would ‘look wrong,’ might want to think about the emotional effect on Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and observant Christians who are now being asked to stop wearing symbols that are both personally meaningful and indicative of long, complex systems of meaning and purpose.”

nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.caAn image released by the Quebec government showing, top three, "non-ostentatious" religious symbols that could be worn by public employees, and, bottom five images, "ostentatious" symbols that would be banned under the charter.

John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, and Andrew Bennett, the ambassador for religious freedom, met with Nigerian community leaders Monday to discuss measures to stem religious persecution and discrimination in that beleaguered country.

Following the meeting, Mr. Baird was asked what he thought about the Parti Québécois government’s plans to bring in a “Charter of Quebec Values” that would reportedly ban conspicuous religious symbols from public institutions like hospitals, government buildings and daycares.

The normally garrulous Conservative minister turned bashful all of a sudden. The mandate of the new Office of Religious Freedom is foreign policy, he said.

His boss, Stephen Harper, has been similarly taciturn, while the official comment from the Prime Minister’s Office when the story broke was that the debate will be held at the provincial level. Jason Kenney, the new employment minister, was unable to contain himself on Twitter last week, saying that freedom of religion is a “universal principle.” Even he appears to have received the memo from the PMO that further interventions are unwelcome and has been silent since then.

But if the Office of Religious Freedom is to have any credibility, surely it must speak out about discrimination in its own backyard?

If the government that set it up is to be plausible when it claims it is a champion of inclusiveness and human rights, surely it must condemn intolerance?

This subtle racism is clearly targeted at wearers of kippas, turbans and hijabs; it is not-so-subtle pandering to the baser instincts of white Quebeckers by a minority separatist government that needs to divert attention from its ineptitude on the economy (unemployment in the province rose to 7.6% from 7% in the year to July, the only province other than PEI to see an increase).

Pauline Marois, the Quebec premier, remains coy on the details of her latest foray into the morass of identity politics, which she claimed Sunday will be a unifying force. “What divides Quebeckers is not diversity, it’s the absence of clear rules,” she said.

Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, was right when he said that the world is laughing at Quebec over this blatant attempt to motivate “fear of the other” for political gain.

“I don’t think this is who we are and I don’t think it honours us to have a government that doesn’t know our generosity and openness of spirit as a people,” he said.

Those words will find admirers across English Canada, even if it’s far from clear that Mr. Trudeau is right about the better angels of many Quebeckers. But it’s what Canadians expect from their prime minister.

So why are the Conservatives — and NDP leader Tom Mulcair — reluctant to wade into the debate (Mr. Mulcair said Monday he wants to wait and see what’s in the text before condemning it)?

If you are a political party whose vital signs are experiencing a revival in Quebec — albeit from grave to critical — annoying three-quarters of the electorate is not a route back to good health.

Mr. Harper spent the summer overhauling his Quebec team, making Denis Lebel, the infrastructure minister, his regional lieutenant, and bringing in a new top adviser, former staffer Catherine Loubier. The game plan is to be more alive to the sensibilities of francophone Quebeckers. The first fruit of the policy was a bump in the polls — up to 38% in the Quebec City region where the party lost all its seats in 2011 — even if this was largely because of old-fashioned pork-barrelling, when Mr. Harper committed funding to open up a steep road to winter drivers through the National Battlefields Park.

But at some point soon, the prime minister will have to call the PQ’s plan what it is — a disgrace. We can hardly march around the globe hectoring despots for religious discrimination when Canadian citizens are seeing their freedom of expression restricted, in order to boost the electoral prospects of a party that laughingly calls itself progressive.

William O. Douglas, the eminent former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, once said freedom of speech (and by extension, expression) should not be regulated “like diseased cattle and impure butter.”

Mr. Harper should borrow that line, even if it costs him votes in Quebec.

MAPLE, ONT. — Andrew P. W. Bennett, Canada’s first ambassador of religious freedom, is a Christian academic studying toward a theology degree in Ottawa, an expert on Scottish devolution, and a government policy analyst with experience in the Privy Council, Export Development Canada and Natural Resources Canada.

With four staff and a $5-million annual budget, his new role is to promote freedom of religion, belief and conscience around the world by ensuring it is reflected in Canada’s foreign policy.

“I’m very much looking forward to taking on this great challenge,” he said yesterday at an Ahmadiyya Muslim mosque north of Toronto, chosen for the announcement because the minority sect, which believes in a Messiah who died in Punjab in 1908, is persecuted as heretical in Pakistan.

By viewing problems as diverse as the oppression of Tibetans in China, the disenfranchisement of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and violence by Islamists against Christians in Nigeria, through the prism of religious freedom, he said he expects to give a louder voice to foundational Canadian values in a noisy world.

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“It’s building awareness about the issue of religious freedom abroad,” he said of the job. “It’s about interacting with the various communities here in Canada who are in the diaspora from these areas where religious freedom is not respected. And, so, I think those are the early steps that need to be taken.”

“My role is not to get involved in all the aspects of Canadian foreign policy and commercial policy,” Dr. Bennett said. “My role is to promote religious freedom. This is not about a theological question. It’s about a human question. It’s a human issue, not a theological issue.”

First proposed by the Conservatives in the 2011 campaign, the Office of Religious Freedom was inspired by Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister of minorities, who was assassinated in 2011, three weeks after meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss the project.

Mr. Bhatti, a Christian, defended fellow religious minorities “knowing that it placed him under a constant and imminent threat to his life. He was an honourable and humble man,” Mr. Harper said, after introducing Dr. Bennett.

His death left a legacy of hope, Mr. Harper said, “that if there is goodness enough to inspire one man to speak out, even in the most harrowing of circumstances, there is goodness enough to inspire all of us to do our part.”

“This is not an office to promote any particular religion. It is an office to promote religious diversity and religious tolerance around the world,” Mr. Harper said.

“People who choose not to believe, that’s a valid religious and democratic perspective that we all must also accept and promote. We’re not trying to oppose, we’re trying to respect people’s own religions, their own faith choices, or non-faith choices, and not impose those choices on others. Just as it is important that religion be respected in a pluralistic and democratic society by those who don’t share religion, it is likewise expected in a very religious society that those who don’t share faith will be respected.”

He cited as examples of persecuted religious minorities: Christians and Bahais in Iran, Shia Muslim pilgrims in Iraq, Coptic Christians in Egypt, Christians in Nigeria, Uighur Muslims in China, and others.

“The list, appallingly, goes on. In the face of these injustices and atrocities, Canada will not be silent. Indeed, Canada has not been silent,” he said, mentioning diplomatic efforts at the G8 and La Francophonie, and also Canada’s offer of safe haven to 20,000 Iraqis, many of them Chaldean Catholics, “driven from their ancient homeland under the threat of death.”

“But we are compelled to do more by the sheer number and gravity of the offences against this fundamental right around the world and the assault it implies on democracy itself,” he said. “The cause is just. The need is urgent. And our responsibility is clear.”

Citing former prime minister John Diefenbaker — who, in proposing his Bill of Rights, famously said, “The hallmark of freedom is a recognition of the sacred personality of man.” — Mr. Harper said the freedom to worship according to conscience “is at the root of our personalities and, therefore, at the root of all of our liberties.”

“There is a crucial and historical link between respect for religious pluralism and the development of democracy itself,” he said.

Dr. Bennett gave only brief remarks to a scrum of reporters.

“I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues in the foreign service and the department of foreign affairs that are doing this every day,” he said. “They’re out, in our missions, talking about religious freedom in those countries where there is this challenge posed to people seeking to practise their faith, to live their faith.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will unveil the government’s long-awaited Office of Religious Freedom and name Canada’s first religious freedom ambassador at a Toronto-area Ahmadiyya Muslim community centre on Tuesday.

The announcement at Tahir Hall in the Toronto suburb of Vaughan will fulfil a two-year-old promise that has seen its fair share of controversy since it was first proposed during the 2011 federal election.

The government has pointed to a growing body of literature linking religious freedom with democratic rights and societal well-being to justify making the safeguarding of religious minorities abroad a key tenet of Canadian foreign policy.

But critics have worried about the government picking and choosing which religions the $20-million office defends, and using the institution as a tool for domestic political gain.

The government has not officially confirmed the prime minister’s presence at Tahir Hall, which was opened by the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim community last July and can hold 800 people.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s spokesman Rick Roth would only say the office “is a priority for our government, and is a part of our principled foreign policy.”

However, numerous organizations have confirmed receiving invitations to the prime minister’s event, which was first reported by Ottawa-based foreign policy newspaper Embassy.

Those interviewed expressed cautious excitement about the religious freedom office’s official launch.

They say the need to protect religious minorities and freedom is as critical now as when the government promised the initiative two years ago.

But the fact the office has taken so long to come together, and that the details remain largely unknown, provides reason enough to temper expectations.

“We will have to see what happens with the office and what the mandate is,” said Gerald Filson of the Baha’i Community of Canada. “We haven’t seen the mandate and we don’t know who the ambassador is.”

The ambassador’s identity could be a key indicator of how the Harper government sees the office functioning, which may explain reports it had a hard time finding someone to take the position.

“It’s probably a difficult appointment, a delicate appointment,” Filson said. “Anything to do with religion is delicate. It’s a very tough appointment.”

Similarly, it remains unclear exactly what the office will do, or how it will fit into Canada’s dealings with the rest of the world.

“The potential (for the office) is great,” said Kathryn White, executive director of the United Nations Association of Canada. “But there remain lots of potential pitfalls in terms of how the office actually conducts its mandate.”

The Conservative government has said it is planning to spend $5 million a year on the initiative over the next four years.

Documents obtained through access to information show $500,000 will go to the office; where the rest will go is unclear.

The government does plan to include Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canadian foreign aid agency, CIDA, in the initiative.

This implies visas or refugee settlement as well as money to individuals and community organizations representing religious groups enduring discrimination.

There is precedent for such an office; in 1998, the U.S. administration of President Bill Clinton signed off on a similar initiative, which had been unanimously approved by Congress after nearly two years of fractious debate.

But while boasting successes, the U.S. effort has been accused of bias against Muslims, championing Christianity, and using taxpayer dollars to pursue pet projects.

Similar concerns have been raised over the past two years as the Harper government has moved to create a Canadian office.

Some Muslim groups have complained they were excluded from consultations, while a recent study found a surge in the amount of Canadian foreign aid money channeled through religious groups, many of them Christian.

The government has also defended its decision to channel foreign aid money through an evangelical group, Crossroads Christian Communications, that posted anti-gay messages to its website.

NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar noted the government discussed the office with international religious leaders, such as leaders of the Coptic Orthodox church, that boast a large number of members in key ridings across Canada.

However, the government refused to meet with international human rights groups.

Dewar said this raises concerns the office will simply be an extension of the Harper government’s ongoing effort to court certain ethnic groups.

“There is nothing wrong with the issue of promotion of religious freedom,” Dewar said. “But this seems to be more about domestic politics than about international affairs.”

Just the facts, Justin TrudeauJustin Trudeau’s pledge to base governance around “hard, scientific facts and data” isn’t particularly special, the Ottawa Citizen‘s Dan Gardner argues. Politicians routinely back up their preferences with evidence. For example, Liberals “prove” that the long-gun registry worked based on trends that began decades before its implementation, and the not-very-scientific fact that worthy organizations support it. The real revolution, says Gardner, would be a government that committed to “make randomized trials and cost-benefit analyses of new policies universal and mandatory. … Ensure that every scrap of evidence is made freely available to all in a single information clearing house. Also, create the Canadian equivalent of the United States Government Accountability Office.” Sounds terrific. But we shan’t wait up.

In the Toronto Star, Allan Gregglaments that “governments are ceasing to use evidence, facts and science as the basis to guide policy and instead, are retreating to dogma, fear and partisan advantage,” and appeals for “reason” in political discussion. In the process, he illustrates Gardner’s point rather nicely: “How could a government forsake the census’s valuable insights — and the chance to make good public policy — under the pretence that rights were somehow violated by asking Canadians how many bathrooms were in their home?” he asks. How can they mount a “massive penitentiary construction spree” that flies “directly in the face of a mountain of evidence that crime [is] on the decline”? And — wait for it — how could they scrap the long-gun registry when “virtually every police chief in Canada said it was important to their work”? Except that police chiefs tend to be “tough on crime” in the Harperian sense, too. Why trust them on one file and not another?

In a very interesting piece, Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt profiles Trudeau’s leadership team. They are, he reports, “progressive, environmentalist and internationalist, but with a pragmatic tilt.” And they seem extremely eager to talk up this evidence-based policymaking rubbish.

Monte Solberg, writing in the Sun Media papers, composes a worthwhile (for a change) little rant against Trudeau’s contention that “to millions and millions of Canadians, their government has become irrelevant [and] remote from their daily lives, let alone their hopes and dreams.” This, says Solberg, “is an odd thing to say about a federal government that is only slightly less omnipresent than God.”

Paul Adams, writing for iPolitics, cautions Team Trudeau against taking too much solace at this stage of the game from positive polling numbers. Let’s see what happens in Quebec, he suggests, once his opponents “re-stoke the fires of antagonism towards the Trudeau of the War Measures Act, the patriation of the constitution without the Quebec government’s consent, and opposition to MeechLake. And how he handles it if they do.”

Talking of Quebec, the Montreal Gazette’s Henry Aubin argues that Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s record on corruption — routinely attacking media for reporting on it; “undermin[in]g the ability of the city’s aggressive auditor-general, Jacques Bergeron, to ferret out questionable conduct”; “adopt[ing] a code of ethics for elected officials … seven years after having promised to enact one” and only once “he had no choice” — is “grossly unsuited for leadership.” But he sees no upside to an early departure: Another Mayor from Tremblay’s Union Montréal party would be no help; an early election is unlikely to produce a stable council; and while the Municipal Affairs Ministry could put the under trusteeship, Aubin argues the ministry has “a weak grasp of Montreal’s complexities.” Better for Montrealers to grit their teeth for another 13 months, in his view.

The Gazette’s Don Macpherson, meanwhile, brings some all-too-rare good news from Quebec: The Parti Québécois’ minority status likely provides Premier Pauline Marois an “excuse” to hold off on extending Bill 101 restrictions to CEGEPs. She can “submit [it] to consultative hearings,” for example, “where overwhelming opposition might kill it.” Which it should, because as Macpherson illustrates, it’s an asinine solution to a non-problem, and most francophones don’t even support it.

It feels silly even to identify the author of this sentence, but it’s Conrad Black in the National Post: “The migrations from Quebec and elsewhere have gradually, over 50 years, transformed Toronto from a tank town of low church Protestant bigotry and ugliness, and radical segmentation between the Catholic and Protestant sections of an almost monochromatic white city — where only hotels had liquor licences, and cinemas were not open on Sunday, and even on Saturday night, everything (which wasn’t much) shut down before 11 o’clock — to a serious metropolis by international standards.” It’s an altogether splendid read, though we fear it may profoundly sadden francophone Quebecers.

Health and safetyThe Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer recounts “an almost forgotten chapter of B.C. history,” namely its groundbreaking move towards universal health insurance in 1936. This divided the governing Liberals terribly: One, “a medical doctor, denounced the proposed Health Insurance Act as ‘a half-baked scheme,’ ‘an abortion,’ ‘an encephalitic monstrosity’ and the product of ‘sob sisters.’” But it eventually passed, with support from the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation … and then it quickly died, after the “Liberals surrendered to a combination of pressure from employers not wanting to pay their share of the insurance premiums, doctors and the economic realities of the Great Depression.” And it was left to Saskatchewan to claim the title of “cradle of medicare.” Interesting stuff.

The Vancouver Sun’s Peter McKnight argues that the Supreme Court’s clarification on disclosure responsibilities for HIV-positive people doesn’t provide very much clarity at all — and thereby reveals the problem as generally “one for the public health system rather than the criminal justice system,” which “is not well-suited to dealing with such delicate matters.”

The Court’s reliance on condom usage and low viral loads “leaves room for things to go wrong,” TheGlobe and Mail’s editorialistsworry. “Condoms break, and people catch colds.” (Indeed. Our favourite rulings are the ones that guarantee a 0% chance of anything “going wrong” ever again.) “In 1998, Madam Justice (now Chief Justice) Beverley McLachlin said a person with HIV who doesn’t disclose his condition ‘shocks the conscience.’ Now the law sees that behaviour as acceptable, in some circumstances,” they conclude. “It shouldn’t be.”

The Citizen’s editorialists, however, seem mostly satisfied. Focusing on “the risk of transmission” and “whether it represents a ‘significant risk of serious bodily harm’” isn’t the only approach the Court could have taken, they say; “but it does, at least, recognize that a blanket law handing down aggravated sexual assault convictions in every case — with the potential for life in prison — is extreme and inappropriate.”

An odd approach to religious freedomThe Globe‘s Doug Saunders is not a fan of Parliament’s new Office of Religious Freedom. First of all, he argues, it ought to be irrelevant: “The freedom of individuals to hold religious beliefs of their choice, to speak and write openly of those beliefs without penalty, and to partake in religious rituals on private property and at places of worship” is “fundamental,” hewrites. “That we would use a government office to promote religion above other freedoms is dangerous: It implies that they’re less important.” Second of all, he says “the core values of our common culture, the things that make us Western and modern — democracy, equality, the rule of law — were forged through the rejection of religion and the overthrow of spiritual authority.” Of course religious freedom is important. But Saunders thinks we’re liable to “send the wrong message to the wrong people.”

And then there’s Vic Toews’ war against non-Christian prison chaplains, which … well, it grates a bit against this message, does it not? Postmedia’s Stephen Maher notes that this whole thing started with the announcement that a part-time Wiccan chaplain was to be hired. “A lot of devout Christians — like Toews, perhaps — think Wiccans are not just harmless spell casters, but devil worshippers,” Maher notes, and that’s problematic. “That is similar to the way people in some other countries view religious minorities that we consider mainstream, and every year too many people around the world are butchered by mobs for their religious beliefs.” Perhaps a government capable of such a ham-fisted manoeuvre is not ideally situated, Mahet suggests, to promote religious freedom abroad.

The Star’s editorialists call for this thoroughly bizarre decision to be overturned. A fine idea. But why not go further and overturn Vic Toews himself?

Strange bedfellows and strange enemiesThe Post‘s Jonathan Kay notes that aboriginal activist Terrance Nelson’s visit to Iran, whose Ayatollahs he says “have always promoted the human rights issues of indigenous peoples in this country,” mimics a similar flirtation among native radicals in the 1980s with the South African government. “In the last 25 years, nothing has changed, apparently,” Kay writes: “Militant native leaders, who purport to be pursing the cause of racial justice, make common cause with the most openly hateful and bigoted regimes on the whole planet.” Kay hopes the Assembly of First Nations will follow precedent and condemn Nelson’s visit to Iran.

And Robert Fulford, writing in the Post, argues that the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic hostility on display in Malaysia, which “has never had a dispute with Israel” and has a Jewish population of essentially zero, illustrates “the pain and difficulty of Israel’s place in the world.” Canada should be proud, he argues, to stand against the “automatic enmity” Israel often receives and generally give it “the benefit of the doubt.”

JAKARTA — A mob of 600 Islamic hardliners threw plastic bags filled with urine at an Indonesian church congregation celebrating the ascension of Christ, a lawyer said on Friday.

The attack, during which stones and dirt were also hurled, occurred on Thursday as around 100 Christians prepared to hold a service at a church in Bekasi, a city on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta.

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Members of the Philadelphia Batak Christian Protestant Church have been targeted several times in recent years.

“They attacked when the priest started to speak to the congregation. A crowd of 600 people threw bags of urine and dirty water as they tried to push police,” a lawyer for the church, Judianto Simanjuntak, told AFP.

“Police didn’t even try to disperse the crowd, so they were open to attack us.”

National police spokesman Saud Usman Nasution confirmed there was an incident and that “an investigation has started, although no one has been arrested”.

In 2009, the local administration ordered the church be shut down, but a provincial court overruled the decision, which was also upheld by the Supreme Court last year.

Several other churches in Bekasi have suffered attacks in recent years, the worst leaving a priest badly bashed and an elderly leader stabbed during a Sunday service in 2010.

Simanjuntak said that groups of Islamic hardliners had intimidated Christians in Bekasi several times this month and that leaders of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) had been spotted among them.

There has been more criticism this week that hardliners are wielding too much power in the country after the police Tuesday refused US pop singer Lady Gaga a permit to perform in Jakarta.

The FPI, which has carried out mob attacks in recent years on Islamic minority groups and Christians, promised chaos if the provocative performer entered the country.

Police also shut down several events held by Canadian writer Irshad Manji after the FPI held violent protests condemning Manji’s liberal views on Islam as well as her homosexuality.

Ninety percent of Indonesia’s population of 240 million identify themselves as Muslim but the vast majority practice a moderate form of Islam.

WASHINGTON — Washington’s police chief on Wednesday gave the green light for turbaned Sikhs to serve as officers, making the capital the first major U.S. city to accommodate the religion’s articles of faith.

The police department said that 4,000 officers have gone through cultural training to sensitize them to the Sikh faith and that the first Sikh American keeping his turban and beard was expected to join the force in August.

“Then to think about something as simple as appearance or a grooming standard that would prevent somebody who is talented enough to meet all that other criteria, it really just doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Sikh men are required by faith to wear a turban and beard and carry a ceremonial sword. The requirements have often conflicted with codes in Western countries that call for men to be clean-shaven or wear assigned headgear.

Since 2010, the U.S. military has made exceptions to allow observant Sikhs to serve. Turbaned Sikhs already serve as police officers in several other countries including Britain, Canada and India, where the religion was founded.

But New York City, which has a large Sikh community, maintains a prohibition on turbans. In 2003, a Sikh traffic officer filed a discrimination lawsuit but the police department reverted to its former rules after he left the force.

Los Angeles County has allowed Sikh Americans to serve with turbans but only in the sheriff department reserves, not on active duty, according to activists.

The U.S. Sikh community, estimated by activists at around 700,000 strong, has endured harassment and sporadic violence since the September 11, 2001 attacks as assailants mistakenly associate their turbans with Islamic extremism.

Jasjit Singh of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which partnered with Washington’s police department, hailed the US capital for “affirming that religion is no bar in public service.”

“We hope that other police departments around the country will follow their pioneering leadership,” Singh told the news conference.

“It was over 100 years ago that Sikh Americans came to this country. Today we join our counterparts across the world in being able to protect our communities — and proudly wear our turbans and beards while doing so.”

“When officers can garner the respect and trust of the community by mirroring that community, then people are truly respectful and trusting of the police and are sharing information, which helps us to close cases,” he said.

Washington’s police department was at the forefront in 2000 when it set up a special liaison unit to work with the gay community.

Lanier, one of a growing number of women to head police departments, said that the prohibition on Sikh articles of faith reminded her of her own experience as female officers formerly were not allowed to ride in patrol cars with their male counterparts.

“I wouldn’t be standing here today if there weren’t policy changes years ago as a police officer, much less as the police chief,” she said.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/sikhs-can-now-serve-on-d-c-s-polce-force/feed3std510954752N.S. school backs off from ban of student’s T-shirt with pro-Jesus messagehttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/n-s-school-backs-off-from-ban-of-t-shirt
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/n-s-school-backs-off-from-ban-of-t-shirt#commentsSat, 05 May 2012 15:48:04 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=169899

A Nova Scotia school board on Friday backed away from a controversial decision to ban a student from wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Life is Wasted Without Jesus.”

William Swinimer had vowed to be sporting the shirt when he returned to school on Monday after a five day suspension.

The incident gained national attention this week, and with public criticism mounting, the South Shore Regional School Board ruled he could wear the T-shirt when he returns to class Monday, local pastor Varrick Day said.

“It certainly is a step forward in Nova Scotia and maybe across Canada,” Mr. Day said. “It opens the door for children and grandchildren and the future for kids going to school. [It shows] we have the backbone to stand up to fight for our freedom.”

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The school board — which initially defended the decision to suspend Mr. Swinimer — could not be reached for comment late Friday. But in a message on its website, the board announced a meeting at Mr. Swinimer’s school Monday to facilitate “open dialogue” on how students can express their beliefs “in a complex multicultural school environment.”

Nancy Pynch-Worthylake, the board’s superintendent of schools, noted the goal was “to provide an opportunity to learn how to express beliefs and concerns.

“To that end, the T-shirt is not what matters anymore,” she said in the online statement. “It is very important that we move away from a narrow debate about a slogan or message on a T-shirt and on to a broader discussion of how to express our beliefs in a respectful manner and how we deal with concerns about that message.”

The board also noted that it supports the rights of students and staff to express their beliefs “in a non-discriminatory way, including messages worn on clothing.”

Mr. Swinimer, 19 and in Grade 12, continued wearing his yellow T-shirt even after the vice-principal at Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin told him not to because students had complained it was offensive. Mr. Swinimer’s defiance earned him a series of in-school suspensions and ultimately the five-day at-home suspension.

“It’s standing up for my rights as a Canadian citizen; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion,” Mr. Swinimer told the National Post this week in explaining why he planned to wear the T-shirt again Monday.

The incident has ignited a fierce nationwide debate about the balance schools must strike between religious accommodation, freedom of speech and the desire to avoid offending other students.

BERLIN—A leader of Germany’s ruling party criticised plans on Wednesday of an ultra-conservative Muslim group to hand out millions of copies of the Koran, calling it a threat to religious peace.

The Salafist Muslim group “The True Religion” intends to distribute 25 million free German translations of the Koran to non-Muslims in Germany as well as in prisons, mosques, hospitals and schools.

“There is little in principle against the distribution of religious works,” Guenter Krings, vice chairman of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told the Rheinische Post newspaper, but added that this depended on the distributor.

“The radical Salafist group is disturbing the religious peace in our country with their aggressive approach,” he said.

“Wherever possible this aggressive campaign must be stopped,” he told the newspaper, saying the plans were obviously intended for the copies to end up in German schools.

The plans by the Salafist school of Islam, which has its roots in Saudi Arabia, have re-ignited debate in the German media about Islam and the integration of the country’s Turkish population of 4 million.

Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty ImagesVisitors sit inside the Sehitlik mosque, October 3, 2004 in Berlin, during the "open-mosque-day" organised by the muslim community in order to inform about islamic religion and culture.

German media reported that supporters of the group set up information stands handing out German-language versions of the Koran in more than 30 cities during the Easter weekend, including Berlin, Duesseldorf and Hamburg.

National daily Die Welt said that around 300,000 copies had been distributed so far.

Ibrahim Abu Nagie, a Salafist preacher, speaking in an undated video on the group’s website, urged all German Muslims to hand out copies to their neighbours.

“If every Muslim does that then within a year we will have supplied every person in Germany with a Koran translation and they will not label us as terrorists or radicals or anything else, when they read Allah’s book,” he said.

Speaking in the same video, Abu Nagie said the first 20,000 copies were financed by two Turkish people, and that he had rejected financial support from organisations in Bahrain as they wanted to “write their names in the book”.